A few weeks ago, the Telegram white paper leaked. The white paper discusses Telegram’s plans to build a decentralised ecosystem, launch a variety of Blockchain services and, of course, the Telegram Open Network (TON) comes with their own cryptocurrency called Gram. There are various rumours that Telegram is looking to raise at least $500 million in a pre-ICO sale and another $500 million in the actual ICO. As such, it could become the largest crypto raise to date and have a significant impact. However, it all depends on how Telegram will approach their ICO.

After all, the current trend within the crypto market is to run an ICO with simply a white paper and raise millions to build the vision presented in that whitepaper. More of than not, these ICOs are a scam as we saw last week when Ethereum startup Prodeum disappeared after having raised $11 million. Apart from scamming investors, they also performed identity theft, as the ‘founders’ of Prodeum claim they were not aware that their names had been used in the scam. Such scams are a threat to the crypto community and it is time for regulators to start regulating ICOs just as we have regulated IPOs, …